Symposium On Sound :: April 26 - 27, 2008 :: Exhibition: On the Sensations of Sound :: April 27 - June 29, 2008 :: Scheltema, Leiden (Netherlands).

On Saturday 26 April and Sunday 27 April 2008, the Veenfabriek and the Art History Department of Leiden University organise the Symposium On Sound. This symposium is a gathering of scientists, performers and artists, who will focus on the issue of mutual influence between art and science, more specifically with regard to sound. The exhibition On the Sensations of Sound, which is organised in cooperation with Museum De Lakenhal in Scheltema, will be opened during the symposium. Continue reading

A chapter on Live Audiovisuals written by Nick Collins and Amy Alexander appears in the recently released book, The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music, edited by Nick Collins and Julio d’Escrivan.

The chapter discusses histories of audiovisual performance, including its ancestry in color organs, visual music filmmaking, light shows, cognitive science, and more - as well as various approaches to current practice including VJ’ing, live cinema, and digital media art performance. This one is not available online, but the book is available from the usual sources. Continue reading

Horatio Oratorio - A concert & sound installation by Recording Angels (Aleks Kolkowski and Stephan Mathieu) :: July 11 & 12, 2008 :: Sprawl, The Shunt Vaults, Joiner Street, London Bridge tube station, London SE1.

Horatio Oratorio is an exploration through the history of recorded sound. The earliest recording and playback technologies and rare mechanical-acoustic string instruments are combined with vintage and state-of-the-art electronics. A magnificent array of acoustic horns and custom-built loudspeakers project sound from historic wax cylinder phonographs, gramophones and stroh violins, layered and transformed by live digital sound processing. Continue reading

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) :: Stevens Institute of Technology, Babbio Center (River & 6th Streets) in Hoboken, NJ :: April 5, 2008 :: all events are free and open to the public.

Sponsored by Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center and the Art & Technology Program at Stevens Institute of Technology, founded in 1966 by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, to provide artists with access to new technology and to promote collaborations between artists and engineers. Continue reading

[Image: Icon attached to the railing] Touched Echo, a performative installation by Markus Kison, can be experienced at Brühlsche Terrasse, Dresden until October 31, 2008. The installation takes visitors back to the night of February 13, 1945 when Dresden’s Old Town was almost completely destroyed.

An icon on the balustrade instructs participants to adopt a contemplative position - one must lay ones elbows onto the balustrade, cover ones ears, and look at the Old Town. While in this position, they hear the sounds of bombers and explosions, which travel through their arms directly into their inner ears via bone conduction. Continue reading

voiceoverhead - A project by Achim Lengerer & Dani Gal featuring Casper Cordes, Harun Farocki, William Furlong, Sharon Hayes :: until March 1, 2008 :: February 29, 2008: An evening of live-performances - Casper Cordes & Ellen Ugelvik; Discoteca Flaming Star; Will Holder; Guy-Marc Hinant - subrosa; Achim Lengerer & Dani Gal :: SMART Project Space, Arie Biemondstraat 105-113, Amsterdam.

In their collaborative practice Achim Lengerer & Dani Gal deal with audio-acoustics and storage media used for acoustic material. Their core interests are audio-recordings, particularly of language, spoken word and speech, original footage taken from radio-broadcastings or other archives. Continue reading

You can read a review of Paul Hegarty’s Noise/Music A History by Greg Smith on Serial Consign. Noise/Music, as you may remember from our announcement in October 2007, looks at the phenomenon of noise in music, from experimental music of the early 20th century to the Japanese noise music and glitch electronica of today. It situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyzes them in terms of cultural aesthetics. It’s a fascinating book.

And now we have a review, which I hope will encourage you to pick up a copy. As Smith writes:

Noise/Music is most easily appreciated as a “disturbingly succinct” history of 20th century music and perhaps the most appropriate text to compare the work to is Michael Nyman’s “Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond”. Continue reading

Bernhard Leitner: TonRaumSkulptur / Sound Space Sculpture (1968-1973) :: Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin :: February 1 - March 24, 2008 :: [info] :: [video] :: [bernhard leitner website]

Sound Spaces are not just spaces in which sound can be heard. Rather, it is sound itself that creates the space and its special qualities. Therefore the experience of hearing not only enables us to experience the space around us, they can also make it possible to experience physical space as an “inner” space. Bernhard Leitner’s work leads us to a quality of sound (as space) that remains concealed within stimulus streams. It shows the potentials of sensual experience that we are barely conscious of because they are either lost or have remained unknown as possibilities. - Cathrin Pichler Continue reading

The Great Stalacpipe Organ :: According to the oddmusic.com gallery description, the organ is located deep in the Luray Caverns in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and is the worlds largest musical instrument. Here is their description:

Stalactites covering 3 1/2 acres of the surrounding caverns produce tones of symphonic quality when electronically tapped by rubber-tipped mallets.

This most unique, one-of-a-kind instrument was invented in 1954 by Mr. LeIand W. Sprinkle of Springfield, Virginia, a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon. Continue reading

[Image: Lifton and Zoline] What a difference a quarter century makes. In a radio program from 1973 about electronically mediated art, various experimenters discuss their ambitions. These include cybernetic figure John Lifton, synthesizer developer Don Buchla, and his colleague, Richard Friedman. Also participating is American painter and writer Pamela Zoline. The discussion was moderated by Charles Amirkhanian and is available from archive.org. Continue reading